It is well known in the field of building temperature control that the simple turning on and off of heating or cooling systems in response to requests from thermostats and other sensor devices wastes energy and causes marked fluctuations in temperatures within temperature regulated areas, such as commercial, industrial and residential buildings. During a heating or cooling cycle, these temperature fluctuations can cause discomfort to the occupants within the temperature regulated areas. Commonly, this is due to the sizing of the heating and cooling equipment to meet the demands of extreme conditions, either of heat or cold. During high demand conditions, that is extreme heat or cold, systems designed to satisfy these conditions operate in relatively efficient operating modes, with infrequent off times. Therefore there is an approximate matching of sizing of equipment to the demand with consequent infrequent off times. However, as environmental conditions become less extreme, the same equipment has a tendency to overwhelm the reduced demand, remaining on to long and heating or cooling the temperature regulated area excessively. This phenomenon is known as “overshoot” and can result in significant variances, or “flux”, in temperature in the regulated areas from the temperature set on the thermostat. This, in turn, wastes energy and causes discomfort to individuals within the temperature regulated areas.
Many computerized systems and methods have been devised to reduce the occurrence of overshoot. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,509,585 describes a system in which a series of static on and off sequences, lasting for example eighteen minutes, are selected and applied successively depending upon the heating and cooling demand within the regulated area. One difficulty of such systems is that they do not respond to off-hour settings when the programmed thermostat or sensor device drops the demand equipment to save energy, such as when a building is closed to personnel. This computerized system is also unable to automatically change over from heating to cooling functions or vice versa. Therefore, this system cannot adapted to fluctuations in the environmental conditions in a regulated area from heating to cooling functions that can occur in a same day.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a system and method for efficiently managing the supply of energy to heating and cooling devices based on temperature conditions within a regulated area that can be utilized with existing sensor devices within a commercial, industrial or residential building. The present invention further provides a system and method for automatically adapting to the real time environmental conditions within a regulated area by optimally determining the program or routine for efficiently supplying energy to the heating and cooling devices. The present invention also provides for a system and method of monitoring and recording the operation of the heating and cooling devices and sensor devices in order to optimize the efficient supply of energy to the heating and cooling devices.